Video Games at the Library: A Historical Perspective

We present an overview or the video games available at the Film Library of Bologna. This institution, in collaboration with the University of Bologna, has a whole collateral branch dedicated to the video games, as they can be considered a recreational activity somehow related to movies. This collection of video games conceptually starts from the ones that are strictly connected to movies, and then expands to a wider class of video games. A video game could be related with a movie either as its direct inspiration, its prequel or collateral plot, or also be created as a direct consequence of that movie. The expansion of the collection available in the Library includes a historical set of video games. In this paper we discuss the historical perspective of the relationship between technology and video games, providing a complete historical view of the video games by means of the titles and the consoles available in the Library. Several dedicated consoles are still in working conditions and could be used by the visitors of the Library.